Conference

Performing Handel – Then and Now
26-27 November 2005
The Foundling Museum, London, England

The theme of the conference was the interpretation of Handel’s music in performance, both in his day and in ours. The performance practice of early music is a large and rich field attracting a great deal of research, of which the audible results are of interest to performers and music-lovers as well as musicologists. The music of Handel is a particularly complex and rewarding subject for such study.  

Donald Burrows:  Musical notation and its role in Handel performances 

David Hunter:  The audience speaks: comments on performances of Handel’s music, 1711­–1759

Graydon Beeks:  Performance practice at Cannons

Peter Holman:  Handel, the viola da gamba and its players in London

Konstanze Musketa:  Handel performances in Halle in the late 20th century

Michael Pacholke:  Customs and abuses in recent Handel performances

Timothy Day:  What do the recordings tell us?

Annette Landgraf:  A quest for the ideal performance

Anthony Hicks:  The ethics of period performance: some aspects of the performer/audience relationship

David R. Hurley:  Handel’s compositional choices in Theodora

Graham Pont:  French overtures at the keyboard: the Handel tradition

Andrew Parrott:  Handel’s Italian choirs

Neil Jenkins:  John Beard: the tenor voice that inspired Handel, Arne and Boyce

David Vickers:  An opera aria cadenza written by Handel?

Richard King:  Acting Alexander

John H. Roberts:  Performing recitative cadences: notation, convention, and recent practice